Photo leads to painting, friendship

Something happened this past Friday that really made my day, and the story is just too good not to share. So, breaking from tradition a little bit, I thought I'd pen a short column to explain:

When I posted on Facebook back in January a picture of Old Main in the snow, Western Washington University parent Kris Rocha got an idea. Her mother, Ardie Shaffer, is an amateur painter, and Rocha thought the photo would be the perfect thing for her to try to paint.

Shaffer was on board, and so for the past few months she's been working on the painting in her small home studio down in northern Arizona. She traveled to Western last week with Rocha, who lives near Portland, Ore., to deliver the piece (and, of course, to visit Macy, Rocha's daughter and Shaffer's granddaughter).

While Shaffer toiled on her painting, Rocha sent me regular updates via Twitter, and through our various conversations we've become friends, chatting about a number of things related to Western and to life in general. I've also been fortunate to connect with Rocha's daughter, Macy, and a few of her friends, both in person and on Twitter, throughout the past few months. When you engage and reach out to folks online, as Rocha has, social media can be a wonderful medium for making friends and strengthening relationships. I've learned a ton about engagement, both personally and on behalf of the university, through these conversations (and made some great friends in the process, which doesn't hurt).

Back to the painting:

This was the first time Shaffer has painted a building, she says, and the many angles and details of Old Main took many hours to get just so. She focused on representing the building exactly as she saw it, even after her painting instructor encouraged her to make a few modifications to the building.

"I wanted it to be just like the photo," she says.

This was also the first time Shaffer had painted snow.

"That part made me really nervous," she says. "I couldn't paint the snow until the rest of the painting was finished. My husband couldn't even watch. He went inside and said, 'Just come get me when you're finished.'"

To paint the snow, Shaffer applied watered-down paint to a toothbrush and used her forefinger to flick it onto the canvas.

Shaffer also spent hours trying to get the color of the light in the Old Main windows and the tone of the fog blanketing the trees in the Sehome Arboretum just right.

She did a pretty good job, don't you think?

The painting soon will be hanging in Old Main Room 375 at WWU.